Hard disk drives use magnetic media to store data and a movable slider having a read/write head positioned over the magnetic media to selectively read data from and write data to the magnetic media. Energy assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) is intended to be used to record information in such hard disk drives at certain high areal densities (e.g., areal densities greater than 1.5 terabytes per square inch). In EAMR, a hot spot at about 400 degrees Celsius (C) is generated at the air bearing surface (ABS) of a slider by a near field transducer (NFT). This hot spot (e.g., NFT and/or adjacent waveguide core) enables the switching of very high anisotropy, thermally stable L10 FePt grains in the magnetic media with the magnetic field of a write pole. The NFT is optically excited by laser light that is conducted to the vicinity of the NFT by a wave guide consisting of a core (e.g., Ta2O5 or other suitable materials) surrounded by a cladding having a lower index of refraction (e.g., ceramic such as SiO2) than the core. However, the hot spot coupled with certain environmental conditions in the hard disk drives can degrade the surrounding cladding and pole tip. As such, systems and methods for reducing degradation of a hot spot cladding in energy assisted magnetic recording are needed.